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Photography

The millions of photographs in the Museum's collections compose a vast mosaic of the nation's history. Photographs accompany most artifact collections. Thousands of images document engineering projects, for example, and more record the steel, petroleum, and railroad industries.

Some 150,000 images capture the history, art, and science of photography. Nineteenth-century photography, from its initial development by W. H. F. Talbot and Louis Daguerre, is especially well represented and includes cased images, paper photographs, and apparatus. Glass stereographs and news-service negatives by the Underwood & Underwood firm document life in America between the 1890s and the 1930s. The history of amateur photography and photojournalism are preserved here, along with the work of 20th-century masters such as Richard Avedon and Edward Weston. Thousands of cameras and other equipment represent the technical and business side of the field.

Mydans' main projects for the Resettlement Administration dealt with photographing urban and residential development and the impoverished dwellings they were replacing. In Chicago, he chose to focus on the human subject, the people whose lives were affected by the Great Depression. Chicago, which had seen an increase in industrial productivity during the 1920s, was hit hard by its consequences during the 1930s. Mydans' caption for this photograph reads: In the depths of the Great Depression, one quarter of the entire American workforce was unemployed. In Chicago, the number was nearly half. Here one of their number sits bowed under the Spring sun on Michigan Avenue, 1936...

As part of his job with the Farm Security Administration, Mydans traveled to Missouri and captured the lodgings of a sharecropping family. Mydans' F.S.A. caption indicates that this is a photograph of a kitchen in a cabin purchased for the Lake of the Ozarks project.

Lake of the Ozarks is one of the world's largest manmade lakes. The main objective during the project was the construction of the Bagnell Dam in order to maintain a hydroelectric power plant. Hundreds of support buildings --serving as housing, a hospital, a jail, and a commissary-- also needed to be constructed to accommodate the thousands of workmen for the project's completion. The cabin pictured here may have served as lodging for one of these workers and his family.

Migrant workers who led nomadic lifestyles, traveling from place to place as the seasons changed, were common across the United States in the early decades of the 20th century. In the 1930s, a combination of droughts, the Depression, and the increased mechanization of farming prompted a migration of small farmers and laborers from Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas to the West.

While working for the F.S.A., Mydans encountered these migrant workers walking alongside a road carrying all of their belongings. Due to the small wages being offered in these areas, this couple was headed to another work location: "Damned if we'll work for what they pay folks hereabouts."

During his time with the F.S.A., Mydans was sent to the southeastern and south central states primarily to document the production of cotton in those regions. While on assignment in Arkansas, he took this picture of men sitting on the "Loafer's Wall." The "wall" was located in front of City Hall and served as a meeting place for the community.

The Resettlement Administration was created in an effort to curb rural poverty among farmers. It purchased small, economically unviable farms and set up government-monitored cooperative homestead communities. These farm families received educational aid along with supervision. A community called Skyline Farms was set up in the Cumberland Mountains region as one such effort of a cooperative farmstead. In this image, Mydans captures some of the children playing in the yard outside the multigrade school.

Carl Mydans' relationship with TIME Inc. began by capturing pictures similar to this one. During his lunch hour, he had photographed a man by the name of Eugene Daniell who was talking to a small crowd as he stood on a soapbox on Wall Street. In this photograph, a woman appeals to the crowd during a noontime rally. A few years prior to this image, office workers had won legal protection for their right to assemble. Despite the crippling effects of the Great Depression on the common working man, the thirties saw dramatic growth in the labor movement.

At the end of 1936, Mydans left the Resettlement Administration and began working for LIFE magazine. One of his early assignments took him to the steel mill at Weirton, West Virginia. Influenced by his time in the R.A., he concentrated on the workers' living conditions and their work practices.

During the early 1900s, Ernest Tener Weir built modern steel mills in the upper Ohio River valley between Ohio and West Virginia. A town was built above the valley. It depended solely on Ernest Tener Weir for electricity, water, gas, sewage, and paving. The town had no municipal government of its own and no police force or fire department, except the company's. In LIFE (Sept. 13, 1937) the caption that accompanies this photograph reads: Like most Weirton streets, Avenue B is not paved and its worker homes are little brightened by sooty shrubs and vines.

Early in 1937, Mydans traveled to Texas to compile his first photo essay for LIFE magazine, covering everything from the state's last great cattle drive to its tough oil towns. This image, however, would not be published until 1939. According to the magazine caption, this short-horned steer is being cut from the herd by two young cow ponies in an effort to develop their hooves and expert footing (Feb. 13, 1939).

Mydans later recalled his frightened reaction after developing the picture; he said a photographer often concentrates so intently on what he is seeing that he is not aware of danger.

When Carl Mydans first started working for LIFE magazine, he was asked to go to Texas and document everything from its last great cattle drive to its tough oil towns. He stopped in the town of Terlingua, a community that had sprung up around some quicksilver mines and the water sources nearby. In the early 1900s, mine workers, and those that supported the mines by farming or by cutting timber for use in the mines and smelters, began to settle in the area. Once the mercury boom ceased, the population slowly dispersed and Terlingua essentially became a ghost town.

When Carl Mydans first started working for LIFE magazine, he was asked to go to Texas and document everything from its last great cattle drive to its tough oil towns. Part of Mydans' Texas photo essay was featured in LIFE (Jan 17, 1938). The caption there reads: A big felt hat, a cigar, a gold watch chain and cowboy boots identify Carl Pugh as Freer's chief of police.

Freer's notoriety came from its being an oil boom town. Early in the 1900s, a small number of families purchased the land and watched it blossom into a community. However, when oil was struck, a flood of settlers overcrowded the area. Although the second oil boom (1932) brought a new age of prosperity to the town, it also attracted a colorful crowd of outcasts. Prior to Mydans' visit, the town constable would chain those who broke the law to telephone poles or to horse hitching posts overnight because Freer did not have a jail. By the time Mydans set foot in it, the town had a small police station along with a chief of police.